Perspectives in Biology and Medicine is pleased to publish in this issue many of the papers that were presented at the Seventh International Workshop at the Jacques Loeb Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. This is the third time that Perspectives has published parts of these annual discussions of the life sciences, which have been held since the inauguration of the Centre in 2008.As has been noted in the (...) introductions to those previous publications in Perspectives, the Jacques Loeb Centre is one of the few remaining venues in the world for discussions of the recent and continued evolution of the basic and applied life sciences, including what.. (shrink)

On behalf of the editors of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, I am pleased to introduce the editors and venue of the Symposium on Synthetic Life: Scientific, Historical, and Ethical Perspectives, which occupies much of the current issue of our journal. We are very pleased that Professors Ute Deichmann, Michel Morange, and Anthony S. Travis planned, organized, and edited the proceedings of the workshop on this topic, held on March 5-6, 2012, at the Jacques Loeb Centre for the History and (...) Philosophy of the Life Sciences and the NIBN at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheva, Israel.Professor Deichmann has been the founding director of the Centre since it was created in 2007. Although she trained in .. (shrink)

The editors of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine are very pleased to present in this special issue the texts of the papers presented at a recent symposium at the Jacques Loeb Center for the History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheeva, Israel. This issue is the second in a series that we have published devoted to yearly meetings at the Loeb Center. The first focused on a Symposium on Synthetic Life: Scientific, (...) Historical, and Ethical Perspectives and appeared in the Autumn 2012 (volume 56, number 4) issue of this journal. The topic remains particularly timely in view of the extensive interest in this field in recent years. These new papers were .. (shrink)